EVENTS

DESEGREGATION TAX HIKE UPHELD

In a 5-to-4 ruling, the United States Supreme Court yesterday rejected a challenge to a 1990 property-tax increase in Kansas City, Mo. - part of a court-ordered racial desegregation plan for the city's public schools. The justices, without comment, left intact rulings that the property owners waited too long before mounting their challenge. The court in 1990 used a related lawsuit from Kansas City to rule that federal judges may order local officials to raise property taxes to help desegregate public sch ools. Dinosaur fossil found

Chinese scientists have discovered dinosaur fossils dating from a period for which no dinosaur fossils have ever been found, an official reported yesterday in Beijing. The Xinhua News Agency said the fossils date back 170 million to 180 million years and fill a gap in the research on the evolution of dinosaurs. The fossils belong to the Sauropoda group of gigantic herbivore dinosaurs. They were four-footed, with a long neck, tail and a small head. The fossils were in a mountain slope near Chongqing, in C hina's Sichuan province, where other dinosaur fossils have been found. Police shot in Algeria

Six policemen in Algiers were shot to death while patrolling yesterday. There have been daily attacks on security forces since last Wednesday despite an intensified campaign to dismantle armed bands of Islamic fundamentalists, blamed for the killing of more than 250 police since a state of emergency was declared Feb. 9. Extremists issue threat

Muslim extremists in Egypt are threatening to attack foreign tourists and embassies in Cairo unless the government calls off a massive nationwide crackdown on them, police reported yesterday. More than 650 suspected extremists were rounded up in Cairo alone during the past week and dozens more were detained elsewhere. The Islamic militants want to turn secular Egypt into an Iran-style theocracy. Mozambique monitors

The United Nations yesterday was expected to approve the sending of 8,000 monitors to Mozambique to ensure that the Oct. 4 peace accord holds. The operation would be designed to avert a political disintegration along the lines of Angola, where a similar peace process is faltering. German trial testimony

Echoing the testimony of his old boss, Erich Honecker, a former East German defense official denied yesterday in Berlin that the Communist government gave orders to kill people fleeing to the West. Former Deputy Defense Minister Fritz Streletz stuck to what has become a party line at the manslaughter trial he is sharing with former party chief Honecker and two other disgraced Communist officials. Streletz's testimony came during the ninth session of a trial that began Nov. 12. The four are charged with the deaths of people killed while trying to flee the former nation. Drug smugglers arrested

Police in Tokyo said yesterday that they have arrested three Colombians on suspicion of having attempted to smuggle about 4.4 pounds of cocaine into Japan with a street value of 140 million yen ($1.1 million).